


Earthman

by theskywasblue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-04
Updated: 2011-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-15 09:36:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>but Cas was something immense and powerful, and Dean couldn’t remember when he had gone from being the angel on his shoulder to an angel on a leash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Earthman

Dean's life, when he thinks about it, is all about the extra inning epiphanies - those moments when everything else is just gone to shit and his brain finally kicks in with the answers he could have used about a decade sooner.

The last time it happened he had been in the Green Room, about a half-breath from saying yes to Michael and he'd looked down at Sam's face and realized that he couldn't ever let his brother down like that, _ever_ ; even to save the world. Some things were just more important.

He’d had another of those ridiculously perfect moments of clarity watching Cas set fire to Crowley’s bones, a moment when his brain chimed in with _hoshit – Angel_ as if he didn’t already know what Cas was. He’d seen it, the proof of it, a million times, seen it painted in black shadow across the walls of an old barn, seen it carved into Cas’ skin – but he hadn’t really _felt_ it in a long time – maybe not since Stull Cemetery, when he’d looked at the...man...standing in front of him, for an instant thought he saw whatever it was that was packed corset-tight inside the skin that had once belonged to Jimmy Novak and had uttered the words “Cas, are you God?”

Cas wasn’t God – Dean could safely say he wouldn’t know God from any old Joe he passed on the street – but Cas was still something immense and powerful, and Dean couldn’t remember when he had gone from being the angel on his shoulder to an angel on a leash. There wasn’t anyone Dean could blame for that but himself – when he had discovered he could use Cas, he really had gone all out; the full Dean Winchester special con-job: _if you care the least little bit about me, I’m going to make sure you regret it for the rest of your life_. He knew that at some point he had grabbed Cas by the wings and dragged him down into the mud, ripping his feathers off and crowing in his triumph, “See, now you’re just like us. Now you have to stay here and be like us.”

If he was feeling generous, he would say it was because part of him wanted to protect Cas, and protection meant keeping him as close as possible, in an embrace so tight he suffocated – at least, in the world according to John Winchester, which was more or less all Dean knew about the politics of keeping people safe, or otherwise royally fucking up their existence.

But the truth – in as much as Dean ever surrendered to the truth; something which was a whole lot like surrendering to destiny and was nothing but problematic if you weren’t careful – was probably that Cas was the only thing in the universe Dean had ever had that was his own; not John’s legacy or something to be shared with or surrendered to Sam in order to keep his little brother happy – just his, always his, and Dean wanted it to stay that way.

-End-


End file.
